Criminalization of Abortion in the West

Its Origins in Medieval Law

Inbunden, Engelska, 2017

AvWolfgang P. Müller

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Anyone who wants to understand how abortion has been treated historically in the Western legal tradition must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories. On one hand, there is the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong warranting retribution; on the other, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word, which distinguished the term sharply from "sin" and "tort" and was tied to the rise of Western jurisprudence. To find the act of abortion first identified as a crime in the West, one has to go back to the twelfth century, to the schools of ecclesiastical and Roman law in medieval Europe.In this book, Wolfgang P. Müller tells the story of how abortion came to be criminalized in the West. As he shows, criminalization as a distinct phenomenon and abortion as a self-standing criminal category developed in tandem with each other, first being formulated coherently in the twelfth century at schools of law and theology in Bologna and Paris. Over the ensuing centuries, medieval prosecutors struggled to widen the range of criminal cases involving women accused of ending their unwanted pregnancies. In the process, punishment for abortion went from the realm of carefully crafted rhetoric by ecclesiastical authorities to eventual implementation in practice by clerical and lay judges across Latin Christendom. Informed by legal history, moral theology, literature, and the history of medicine, Müller's book is written with the concerns of modern readers in mind, thus bridging the gap that might otherwise divide modern and medieval sensibilities.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2017-05-31
Mått155 x 235 x 22 mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor280
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9781501746581

Tillhör följande kategorier

Rättshistoria inom Juridik
Medeltiden inom Historia och arkeologi
Etiska frågor och debatter inom Samhälle och politik

IntroductionChapter 1. The Earliest Proponents of CriminalizationThe Scholastic Origins of Criminal AbortionForms of Sentencing in Medieval JurisprudenceCrimen in "An Age without Lawyers" (500–1050)Chapter 2. Early Venues of CriminalizationCrimen in Sacramental ConfessionJudicial Crimen in the Ecclesiastical CourtsPublic Penitential CrimenRoyal Jurisdiction in Thirteenth-Century EnglandChapter 3. Chief Agents of CriminalizationLegislation versus Juristic Communis OpinioCommunis Opinio and Peer DissentSystematic Law before the Rise of the Modern StateChapter 4. Principal Arguments in Favor of CriminalizationSuccessive Animation and CreatianismLegal and Theological Assessments of Therapeutic AbortionThe Demise of Late Medieval EmbryologyChapter 5. Objections to CriminalizationCustomary Indifference North and East of the River RhineRejection in the Royal Courts of England (1327–1557)6. Abortion Experts and ExpertiseEvidence of MidwiferyMedical Embryology and Abortion DiscourseAbortifacient PrescriptionsChapter 7. Abortion in the Criminal Courts of the Ius CommuneCriminal Accusationes and InquisitionesThe Rules and Safeguards of Ordinary InquisitionesExtraordinary InquisitionesChapter 8. Forms of Punishment in the Criminal Courts of the Ius CommuneStatutory and Customary SpecificationsSubstitute PenaltiesAdjustment Out of CourtChapter 9. The Frequency of Criminal ProsecutionsViable Statistical QueriesGeography and Patterns of Record KeepingA Triad of Typical CasesBibliographyIndex

[T]he argumentation is intricate. To put it differently, this reader found that the importance of Criminalization rose to the surface upon a second reading. For, this is an important book, which will interest historians across the sub-disciplinary spectrum and not only late medievalists. It provides a stimulating account of the theoretical and practical development of medieval criminal justice and will become a sine qua non in the history of abortion.- Zubin Mistry (The Mediæval Journal) The Criminalization of Abortion in the West examines the processes which led to the voluntary killing of a human fetus becoming a crime, as opposed to a sin or a wrong compensable by a money payment....This book should be regarded as essential reading for those studying the interface between law and medicine in medieval Europe, to legal historians and social historians.- Gwen Seabourne (Social History of Medicine) Muller traces the tortuous path of the treatment of abortion as a public crime (felony) between the late 12th and early 16th centuries.... He succeeds in demonstrating the shift in the settlement of disputes from the pre-12th-century local control of justice depending on local power and the strength of family status to a more public hearing under the control of centralizing authorities.... Added to these public tribunals to investigate abortion as a crime was the widespread public attitude that regarded it as no more than a sin, if that, subject to confession to a priest and the performance of penance.(Choice)